Rachel McAdams. Dylan O’Brien. Sam Raimi. Gore. Simon checks out an early 2026 treat, with a review of Send Help. On the press tour for Avatar: Fire & Ash, writer/director James Cameron had a message for the section of his fandom keen for him to get back to what he was doing in the 1980s ... Send Help review | Does Sam Raimi still have it?
Rachel McAdams. Dylan O’Brien. Sam Raimi. Gore. Simon checks out an early 2026 treat, with a review of Send Help.
On the press tour for Avatar: Fire & Ash, writer/director James Cameron had a message for the section of his fandom keen for him to get back to what he was doing in the 1980s and 1990s. They wanted the Cameron of Aliens and Terminator rather than the man steering Titanic and umpteen Avatar films. Cameron, er, ‘politely’ suggested to said fans that it was his decision, not theirs.
I’d suggest fans of Sam Raimi may have been tempted to ask a similar question. The man who gave the world the original Evil Dead trilogy back in the 80s and early 90s hasn’t directed a horror since Drag Me To Hell back in 2009. In fact, he’s only directed Oz: The Great & Powerful and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness since then, and while he’s produced a lot of horror, he’s not directed any.
Unlike Cameron though, Sam Raimi has come home, as it were, with teeth sharpened. Send Help proves to be very, very worth the wait.
The setup for the film comes from writers Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, whose simple idea was similar to the one enough to basically launch six seasons of the TV show Lost. In their case, they narrow it down to a plane crash stranding a nerdy woman – played by Rachel McAdams – and her young boss, Dylan O’Brien on a remote island.
They’ve got to survive, simple as that.
Only it isn’t
As familiar as the recipe is, the ingredients here are strong. In front of the camera is a good place to start. McAdams remains, for my money, a generational movie star talent, effortlessly crossing genres and rarely less than memorable. Here, she’s Linda, the kind of worker who regularly finds herself overlooked. She finds herself working in one of those posh, bland corporate offices that Mike Judge’s Office Space had so much fun poking fun at. People sit around in cubicles, save for the management who are kept behind sheet glass in luxurious offices with a golf machine.
Linda, then, does the work, hands it to her immediate boss, who in turn takes her name off it and passes it off as their own. Regularly passed over for promotion, there’s a feeling that it might be her turn, right up until the old boss retires, and in comes the new one.
Said new chief is introduced via a guided tour from President Palmer of 24 – or Dennis Haysbert if you prefer – and we’re introduced to nepo baby Bradley (O’Brien), who’s now in absolute charge. For Linda, this ain’t great news, and she sits there in a comfy cardigan and a dripping tuna sandwich about to be passed over again. Still, at home, she can at least sit next to a pet parrot, watching Survivor.
Bradley meanwhile seems straight out of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, just with a bit of farting around on LinkedIn thrown in. All the while Raimi and his DP, Bill Pope, shoot this like a more soured version of The Apartment.
This is all the opening setup, and it’s terrific. It zips, performances crackle, and there’s a fast sense of injustice growing. Just in time for Linda, Bradley and some of his frat friends to jump aboard a private jet, to try and seal a big new deal. With Hewlett Packard laptops aplenty, it’s off for some work and play, right up until, well, the plane crashes.
Now I deliberately steered clear of trailers and posters for Send Help, so could go into this relatively cold. I’ve no intention of spoiling what happens for you, so need to go deliberately vague. Just to say the power dynamics on the island the plane hits are, well, ‘fluid’. Raimi quickly establishes just how remote the island is, Linda gets a fire going in the time it’d take me to try and work out how the garden in my barbecue should work, and Danny Elfman’s score begins to, well, make itself heard.
Subtlety isn’t always the strength of what follows, but outrageously fun entertainment absolutely is. A lead duo going for it with some gusto, and a director absolutely in a sandbox he brings to life as you’d hope. It bristles with confidence, at times going dialogue-free as things play out, at one point too having our two leads just look at each other and basically flat-out laugh.
By necessity, the closer the film gets to the end, the more some plot needs to kick in (and the film does start to feel a teeny bit stretched), and that just took the pan off the boil a little. But for the most part, Send Help is sizzling away, and an ideal companion piece for the back end of Paul Feig’s recent success, The Housemaid.
On the surface, there’s a comparison too to M Night Shyamalan’s curio Old, but what sets Raimi’s film very much apart is a determination to have as much R-rated fun as it can get away with. Dylan O’Brien makes odd noises particularly well too, I should note, and McAdams? Well, she’s just golden. Again. To see a stage version of this with the pair of them is a spin-off I’d buy a ticket to.
It’s proof here that a film’s premise doesn’t have to be over-complicated sometimes. This isn’t trying to reinvent a recipe. Instead, Send Help is like a particularly delicious stake, or – that rarest of things – a tastebud-tantalising vegan pizza.
I had so much fun. An upgrade on Drag Me To Hell for my money too, and at its best, a wildly entertaining night out, cherry picking references as varied as The Blue Lagoon and Ridley Scott’s Hannibal. Plus, a movie with survival tips playing over the end credits too. James Cameron is welcome to keep mining his Avatar universe. I’m just thrilled Sam Raimi chose to go the other way.
Don’t be a stranger, Mr Raimi. You’re good at this. Really good. I’m off to book a second viewing while you work out what to do next…
